Special Topic: Self-Care and Philosophy

Catalog description

Self-care is a popular topic. The world is stressful, and caring for oneself seems to be important, but it is hard to figure out just what "self-care" means and how to go about it. It is also hard to figure out the balance between what is necessary or valuable and what is self-indulgent. The idea of caring for the self turns out to have a very long history; it is almost as old as Western philosophy. This class will bring together explorations of self-care in ancient history, recent history (from the 1970s onward), and contemporary use. It will also bring together theory and practice. The ideal result will be both a clearer and more deeply grounded understanding of self-care, which might even make a wider range of skills available to students working to care for themselves. These outcomes are in keeping with the philosophy department's aim to orient students in the development of critical and speculative thought, under conditions of intellectual and affective freedom, and with a sense of openness towards alternative visions of life-experience. In the readings from ancient philsophy, we find that self-care is always a part of ethical practice. In the recent historical contexts, and at the values that are foundational in practices. Self-care is necessarily care of the whole person, and we will also find that a person is not whole in isolation. Because we will be reading philosophical texts, with their particular challenges, you must have passed at least one philosophy course prior to taking this one.